Sigyn's Discovery (Part 1)

Nowhere to Hide (LOKI)

I'd been confidently parading about as King of Asgard for several months with no one the wiser about my disguise until yesterday. A split second, a nosy servant, and a moment of weakness shattered my illusion.

With Odin's form, I generously exercised the privileges denied to me when Thor displaced my rightful position on the throne. Sure, casting judgment was more bureaucratic and boring than I anticipated, but that was to be expected in times of peace, wasn't it? And the less I drew attention to myself by making things more, shall we say, exciting, the better.

For this reason, I'd avoided Mother's chambers...Frigga's chambers...until her open door beckoned me in.

It was empty except for the guilt that oozed from the walls from my bad deed. The monster from Svartalfheim who came up the stairs—as I directed—slew her on the balcony steps and left me orphaned, abandoned, alone. Had I known he would find her instead of Odin, I would've thought twice. Would've stopped time. Would've found a way to escape my own cell and protect her. Odin wasn't my father, but she was my mother, regardless of whatever I hissed at her in anger in the final days before she perished. Those words would haunt me until the end of time, and when I found one of her gowns to remember what she smelled like, I wished I could take them back.

But my private reflection on Frigga's life was interrupted by the servant girl. Her approach was so innocent, so unassuming...after all, she greeted a man who mourned his wife, not a man who mourned the mother whose death he was responsible for. How would Odin actually respond to such a thing?

She was young. Sigyn. Familiar, though I couldn't place why. I wanted her to leave, but dismissing her outright might've been suspicious as I had no idea how Odin generally responded to servants and had avoided all interactions with them in his skin.

Sigyn's stated relationship with Frigga—even viewing my mother as hers, in a way—intensified my shame. So I'd hurt all of Asgard, hurt Thor, hurt myself...hurt this girl, who was not nameless or faceless to me anymore. She represented all the potential that Mother cultivated in the people around her.

Even more, Sigyn drew attention to me, the real me, and asked Odin if he mourned me. Why? Did she? With her single question, I felt too exposed. Getting her away from me was essential and couldn't happen fast enough.

When she walked away, however, a peek of green beneath her robe caught my attention, and I wondered for a moment if it actually belonged to me. Nonsense. I shut her out of my mind and the room to keep my wits about me.

Yet the damage had already been done. Sigyn stirred within me the full weight of my qualms, my grief, my guilt, and ultimately my loneliness. What good is a king if he can only act behind a façade? All my work would be lost in Odin's everlasting legacy, and I would be forgotten. If all I'd been taught was correct, Frigga could see me and watched with disapproving eyes.

Did she still blame me for what happened? Could I apologize and earn posthumous forgiveness?

The longer I stared at the false reflection in Frigga's mirror, the more my despair grew. The weakness of my psyche gave way to quiet rambling, which eventually became shouts to no one at all. I openly wept for her, releasing everything I'd fought so hard to keep hidden, and couldn't stand the sight of Odin's judgmental face staring back at me despite the fact I knew that it was false.

So I dropped my cover. Only for a moment. But that moment was enough, for now I had a witness.

Sigyn returned. She knew the truth and ran.

With a flick of my hand, the door to Frigga's room locked, and Sigyn fainted at the second sight of me. A stroke of luck, at best, because it gave me time to decide what to do with her. In the past, I would've been rid of her easily—but as it was a task to dispose of a body in peace time, it wasn't much of an option.